When the conductors of a cable are electrically terminated to contacts on a connector, strain relief arrangements are utilized to prevent forces on the cable from being transmitted to the conductor/contact terminations. The cable typically is secured to a connector housing or shell to transfer the forces to which the cable is subjected to the housing or shell. Typically, a strain relief arrangement will grip, compress or clamp the cable.
Often, strain relief clamping arrangements are provided in connectors which have housings or shells fabricated of a plurality of components. For instance, a typical housing might include two housing halves which are securely assembled together. In assembly, the housing halves, themselves, may be used to clamp the cable therebetween and, thereby, provide strain relief between the cable and the housing. A problem with such cable clamping arrangements is that the cable is "blindly" located between the housing halves. In other words, as the housing halves are clamped together, proper or improper positioning of the cable and the conductors thereof within the housing cannot be seen during assembly. In some such housing constructions, it simply is extremely difficult to manipulate the cable while simultaneously manipulating the housing components.
Consequently, the use of separate clamps for providing strain relief functions and for clamping an electrical cable to a housing or shell component has become well known in the art. A typical cable clamp includes a center section adapted to embrace one side of the cable. For instance, the center section may be arcuately formed to accommodate a round cable. A pair of coplanar wing sections extend from opposite sides of the center section, and each wing section has a hole to accommodate a fastening screw which is screwed into one of a pair of screw posts spaced on opposite sides of the cable. A continuing problem with these types of separate cable clamps is in prepositioning the clamp with its openings aligned with the screw posts, while at the same time maintaining proper relative positioning between the cable and the housing, and still be able to manipulate the screws for insertion through the holes in the clamp and into the screw posts of the housing.
In other words, once a cable is positioned between the spaced-apart screw posts of the housing, the clamp is placed over the cable and the clamp may be properly located generally laterally of the cable. However, even if the clamp is properly located in a lateral direction, there is no way to properly locate the clamp in the axial direction without gripping the clamp and the cable at the same time, while leaving only one hand of an operator to manipulate both the screws and a screw driver. For most operators, this is a very tedious and frustrating assembly procedure. The present invention is directed to solving such problems in an electrical connector having a strain relief arrangement.